From the New York Times, this is the interview. I'm David Marquesie.

The long-awaited Emmy Award-winning series Severance returns for its second season next week.

I've seen a bunch of the new episodes, which have some real surprises in them.

And I can say that I'm very eager to see other fans' reaction to how the show has moved forward with its story.

By way of a reminder, that story is about a rebellious group of employees at the mysterious

and probably malevolent Lumen Industries.

Those employees are office drones whose consciousness has been

artificially separated between their work selves, also known as their innies, and their

outies, their selves away from the office. That sense of a divided self is one to which

Ben Stiller, who co-directed and co-executive produces the series, can probably relate. It's actually one of the things that's most intriguing to me about him.

He's a hugely successful comedic actor from mainstream hits like Meet the Parents and Night at the Museum,

who has gradually stepped away from acting in favor of his first love, directing.

As a director, he's a much more subversive and distinctive stylist than his biggest

acting roles might suggest. Take, for example, more serious projects like his crime drama series

escape at Danamora, as well as Severance, of course, and also his off-the-wall comedy satires

like Cable Guy and Zoolander, the latter of which he also starred in.

So I don't think I'm overreaching and suggesting that there is some any outy, severance-style tension, if you will, running through Stiller's own story.

As I found out while speaking with him at his Manhattan office, that's something he was trying

to make sense of, too.

Here's my conversation with Ben Stiller.

You know, I was thinking about severance and sort of where it fits in the arc of your career.

Are there specific things that working on comedy gave you the tools for when it comes to working on something like severance, which I would describe as maybe comedy adjacent?

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